Posted
by
timothyon Saturday April 18, 2009 @07:58PM
from the don't-tell-anybody-it's-a-secret dept.

CWmike writes "Microsoft will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 in about two weeks, the company's Web site revealed Saturday. According to a page posted on Microsoft's partner program site, Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) may be available to paying subscribers to Microsoft's developer and IT services before May 5. Partners will be allowed to download the release candidate on that date, the first Tuesday of the month. 'Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now,' the page read Saturday afternoon. 'Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.' The link to the download, however, shunted users to the TechNet download page, which did not list Windows 7 RC as one of the available files. This is the second time in just over three weeks that Microsoft's Web site has leaked information about Windows 7 RC. Accidental, or buzz-builder?"

The only reason to run Windows 7 is to know what the non-free software world is doing but you can just watch online videos to find that out. I recently did this and here are my impressions in bullet form:

* Windows 7 is a lot like Vista
* next desktop background feature is kind of cool but i saw it in kde4
* new task bar - makes it easier to switch to mac and more annoying to actually switch tasks using a mouse
* control panel still in the new harder to deal with style but not sure if it still loads piecemeal like Vista
* Libraries are introduced as another way to segment your data in an annoying and OS-locked-in way.

* Ubuntu 9.04 is a lot like Ubuntu 8.10* New theme is kind of cool but still not default.* Default panels installed are still largely useless, taskbar fills up way too easily.* Font size still wrong when I install it, Canonical and I have a game we play called "figure out where the DPI settings are hidden." It gets less fun every year. (In Windows 7, I type "DPI" into the start menu search.)

I don't really have a counterpoint to #5, except to say that every OS'es file manager and the related abstractions are, uh... "locked in." I don't know what you expect. There's nothing stopping you from looking at all the files in a library and performing regular actions on them. And soon, hopefully, many applications will support the library abstraction as a folder path. I.e.: in Songbird, make my music library refer to the OS'es Music Library. That way I can put the music I have on my server, my laptop, etc, all referenced in one place.

I don't know how more "open" you can get with Libraries though, what's your suggestion?

Yes, but 9.04 is the latest twice-yearly release update. Comparing 9.04 to 8.10 as a way of justifying a comparison between Vista and Seven is extremely disingenuous. After all, Seven is supposed to be the all-new, best-ever, heaven-sent OS that is worth buying a new machine for. Even though any fool can see MS is just marketing Vista SE as "Seven", apparently in an attempt to bury Vista's public image problems. It gives them the happy side effect of being able to charge for what amounts to bugfixes, too. I'd expect that even MS' customer base has enough self-respect to be angry about this, but apparently not. We still see the fanbois out in force, rationalizing all over the tech sites. Idiots.

I don't know of any company on the planet that would define Windows 7 as anything but a full point upgrade.

Windows 98SE was insignificant compared to Vista -> 7.

You're putting Microsoft under unreasonable expectations for an upgrade.

As to it being the "best ever" I would agree with that sentiment. It's funny that so many people keep complaining that 7 is just a "service pack" when Vista actually is still getting service packs. Let's compare the two shall we? Take a look at Vista's SP1 and SP2. Now compare that to the changelog for Winodws 7. You might see a different focus where Service Packs SERVICE THE APPLICATION and windows 7 ADDs new features... almost like it's a new product or something. Weird huh.

Since when have service packs been expected too add hundreds of new features and not just fix bugs? By that definition no company should ever release a new product and every new version is just a service pack.

My only suggestion to Microsoft is to release their software under a free software license.

My main point with this post was to give my impressions not having used the OS. I'm not doing a review, but I was trying to figure out what is new and what would be useful to see in free software.

I'm not going to load a beta or RC or even a final version onto any of my machines but at the same time I'm not going to launch a campaign against it. I would like to emphasize that people are much better off long term usi

The control panel in Vista/Windows 7 is *MUCH* easier to navigate, and much better-laid-out than the XP control panel.

With that complaint on your list, I can safely file you away into the "I hate change" group. You don't hate the new control panel, what you hate is that it's different than the old one-- that's fine, but it disqualifies you from reviewing an OS.

And if all that doesn't do it for you, you still have the option of looking at the old XP list.

No, you don't, or if there is, it's not easily user discoverable.

Windows lists down. When I get a list view on Win7, I get 3 columns, which would be okay, I suppose, but it tracks across rows, whic is an incredibly dumb way to organize that list. Its much easier to find something alphabetically in a list form than a 3 column paragraph form.

The way its done now, I have to read several columns until I find what I want. It's a very slow search pattern.

If I want to uninstall a program I hit the start button and type "uninstall" And there it is on my start menu "Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program"

If I want to view network connections I type in "Network Connections" and I get "View Network Connections"

Is the control panel easy to navigate? Not with the names I remember from XP but in some cases the new names actually do make more sense even if I can't find them. "Add/Remove Programs" has become "Programs\Uninstall" or using hte list mode "Programs and Features".

Windows 7's Control panel much easier to navigate than XP's and much much easier to navigate than Vista's.

It's a good point that the search box is more efficient than the old way but usability of the control panel has regressed at least for me. The new feature of a search box is something to get used to, though honestly people are better off spending such time getting used to a free operating system and free software in general.

Wasn't aware of this. Nice feature. But as I mentioned in my original post, this isn't really user discoverable. It's like when you hit Win+R or M for the first time in front of someone who's been using XP for years. "How'd you do that?"

I compute primarily in either OS X or Linux environments and long ago abandoned XP except for games. I've been playing with the Win7 beta and it might replace my Hackintosh as my primary desktop.

Oh, please. Do you have *ANY* idea what he's talking about? The search box at the bottom of the Vista and Win7 Start menuis not a command prompthas no syntax you need to rememberallows searching by simple names/descriptions, not esoteric executable filenamesfilters options as you type - there's no reason to type all of "network connections"makes it easy to find the tool you wantdoesn't actually run anything unless you choose it from the resultsrequires no special knowledge or complex explanationremembers wh

I mostly get annoyed at the way the control panel is displayed to you before it's done loading. So you go to click on an item and it's moved between the time you started the clicking process and the time the click has registered.

ship date? I don't really understand this... if it's 7 1/2 months from RC to ship, how close to an *actual* release candidate is this release candidate? Perhaps it should be called a beta?::shrug::

I can understand a couple months for mastering and to ship/distribute/market, etc., but still that leaves 4-5 months to resolve testing on this RC "candiate." I guess the Borg just move really slowly on testing:-/

You realize that even if the 2010 release date is true... (which frankly I'd be surprised by given it'd mean they'd miss the Christmas sales season)... it's not unreasonable for a company to give themselves (and OEMs) a bit of lead time. After all... just because Microsoft signs off the software being done on a given date and goes to stamp a huge number of retail DVDs doesn't mean that OEMs who ship Windows on their PCs will have signed off on their customizations to it and are ready to ship at the same tim

They are a software company. Not a hardware company. As soon as it's ready to ship, just ship it. Let the OEMs catch up at their own pace. You don't need to buy a new computer to buy an OS (although it is cheaper that way), so why should they have to wait for the computer hardware makers to figure things out. People want a new OS now.

What you forget is that while they are a software company, they are nothing without hardware companies and shipping without or ahead of them would be a sure fire way to alienate them.

Sure... someone could just go buy a new desktop today and a fresh copy of Windows 7 tomorrow and upgrade... however this is beyond what most users do or want to do and providing end users with an easy out of box experience is why most people buy boxed PCs from the big names rather than build one themselves.

Planning for >1 RC is smart, in that it gives you time to fix bugs, but RCs are supposed to be releasable. 7.5 months seems much more like a beta than an RC. You put out an RC with exactly what you plan to release, and then fix any bugs found. Repeat. Once you have all critical bugs fixed you rename the RC to the release.

I've never beta tested a large application that was ready by the end of the second RC.

RC in my experience means it's the entire application in a shipping form that's still full of bugs.

Often a beta will be incomplete. It might not include the licenseing system. It might not include an installer. It might not include some sort of updating software. It might not include the documentation yet. But an RC means it's theoretically 'shippable' just buggy. Then they work out the lats of the bugs and make sure

I thought I'd chime in and ask the undying question of whether Microsoft had come to their senses and finally decided to give free upgrades to Windows Se7en for all legit consumer Vista users.

They could really win some good will back from their users if they did this...kinda like the free Zune* firmware updates for the original players...

*No, I am not a Microsoft apologist, Vista user, or Zune owner. I am typing this from my MacBook while taking a break from my PS3. I just think it would be a good idea for MS to do this for its users. It certainly would be more pro-active than their lame laptop commercials.

Yes it did. At release, you simply could not buy hardware that could run OS X 10.0 well. Indeed, this quite arguably remained true all the way through to 10.2.

For all the complaints about Vista's performance, you could still buy a PC more than beefy enough to run it quickly for under a grand US$ even on the day it was released. It took Apple a couple of *years* to a) release hardware fast enough, and b) optimise OS X sufficiently, that it could be consider

Microsoft has a tiny group of diehard fanboys and that's it?? What planet are you from... Microsoft has thousands of multimillion dollar corporate customers, and a near monopoly on the OS market. Linux has a tiny group of diehard fanboys which are gaining ground, but nothing near the size - nor popularity - of Microsoft.

They know people hate Vista. They know many saw it as the last straw with Windows and switched away from Windows. They know that a lot more are clinging onto XP as if it's their only life raft in a storm. They know that each day that Vista is the current Windows is another day XP users will be tempted to switch away. By holding out the new "Windows which will deliver on all your hopes" just a little longer, that they can stay those hands from making the switch.

The same happened with the Sega Saturm / Sony Playstation. Sega got their console onto the shelves about 1 month before Sony, and console fans were split on whether to wait that little bit longer for the Playstation or buy the Saturn now. Even if the Playstation was delayed a little bit, or out of stock, the carrot was always there, dangling just out of reach but within distance.

By dangling the release in "leaks" which may change later, and making it available to a few, it appears to be very exclusive, which sends another PR message that it's "special". By holding the download window open for a short time, it forces people who want it to act within that window, meaning that it's on their minds during that time. It will translate into a flurry of astorturfing blogs which will no doubt be dugg by fellow astroturfers flaming the fires. All of which sends the message to consumers to just hold on, the cavalry is just around the corner and is on it's way to save you from Vista. All of which conveniently forgets to mention that Vista is just a different regiment under the same flag as the cavalry.

The same happened with the Sega Saturm / Sony Playstation. Sega got their console onto the shelves about 1 month before Sony, and console fans were split on whether to wait that little bit longer for the Playstation or buy the Saturn now. Even if the Playstation was delayed a little bit, or out of stock, the carrot was always there, dangling just out of reach but within distance.

I'm pretty sure that happened with the Dreamcast and PS2 as well. The difference that go around however was that the Dreamcast was vastly superior and is still one of the most interesting consoles to have ever been made.

"many" people switched from windows? what crack pipe are you smoking, because everyone i've seen with a new pc has vista. sure maybe mac's market share went up from 5% to 6%, but your deluding yourself if you think MS doesn't have an iron grip on the desktop.

And they're all miserable, right? I've seen people come into work who have been suckered into buying these leviathan laptops with Vista, and they are constantly having problems, and regret the purchase.

It's probably the people who have actually bought Vista who would be most tempted to switch, rather than those still on XP. Of course, having just bought their white elephant laptop, they might not have the funds to do so yet.

Misconceptions work well for Microsoft, they use them very wisely. They try to tell you that (insert current version of Windows here) is the most popular yet while ignoring the reality. People don't CHOOSE Windows, they choose to buy a new PC, and more often than not the ONLY option they have is Windows. Even when they ask for the PC without Windows they are often told it's not allowed, so they have to pay for something they never intend to use, counting as a Windows sale, even if Linux is running on that h

Thank you for pointing out the other part of this strategy; Microsoft continue to bully and threaten retailers and OEMs into only offering their customers Windows. It stems the flow of deserters somewhat. Things have changed to some degree in recent years though. Some retailers DO offer Linux options on some models, even if you do have to jump through hoops to find them. Netbooks have given Linux a platform it never had years ago. Vista is seen by many as a turd and people want anything but Vista. Linux's p

I've been considering using Windows 7 when I buy a new laptop later this year, but I have a serious question:

How the hell do Windows users backup their files?

I haven't used Windows properly since I was a kid, and I didn't care about backups back then. Nowadays I use rsync every day to mirror files onto an external USB drive and over the network. Once a week I do an incremental backup with rdiff-backup.

I've actually been running Vista as a primary desktop OS for about a month, after 14 years of Unix type OS as a primary desktop system (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OSX, even Solaris)

Why? It's a change. I was too comfortable with all of the Linuxes, the others weren't a good fit for an ultralight Thinkpad. If you don't force yourself to be uncomfortable now and then, you stagnate. (I do still have Fedora in a VM for quite a few things - I'm trying to make myself learn, not be a masochist)

The specific OS is Vista Business 32-bit, because that's what I had a license for (bought it with the laptop "just in case"). If I were to reinstall, I would go with a 64-bit version.

For backups, I am currently using Acronis TrueImage. Based on a test "full image restore", it works. It's primarily an image backup utility, not rsync or similar. I'm just doing routine backups to an external hard drive.

What you're asking for is actually pretty difficult under Windows, as far as I can tell; it' s far easier on Linux or OSX. On the other hand, there is something to be said for a full native Excel 2007 (sorry OOo fans, but calc is nowhere remotely close to a usable Excel replacement, including fundamental design flaws in the solver that have been there since at least 1.1)

IIRC, you *should* be able to use your 32bit key with a 64bit disk.. in fact, the features are based on key, not the disk with Vista... I've been able to use any key, with any disk (note: the 32bit and 64bit disks are different).

Windows has had a native backup tool since the mid 1990's. Most of the backup vendors use it as a base in their products and add on some features. I don't even think MS writes it. The disk management MMC is actually a lite edition of Veritas Volume Manager.

PowerShell is actually kinda nice. It's well integrated with the OS and easy to learn which is surprising. You have to get a decent third party debugger though. Typical that they don't include any decent tools with it. It's a bit like C, Perl, and Java. I see aspects of each in there.

That said, they lost me with Vista. I've gone with a Mac for my last two purchases;)

SyncToy [microsoft.com] is a rather awesome free backup utility from Microsoft. Although it's relatively hard to schedule, it's very easy to use it for any number of one-way or two-way backups. I use it to back up my thumb drive and for various tasks at work.

Many users do a periodic Complete backup and daily user file backups to complete a total recovery solution.

A side benefit of Windows Backup is that it also works with the Windows 'Previous Versions', which is like Time Machine on OS X, but also includes 'on volume' snapshot/copy on write archived versions of all your documents. It is also more accessible and elegant than Time Machine, as it is integrated into the Shell and even older application that have an Open or Save dialog box get access to 'previous versions' of your documents.

So in Windows Vista or Win7, you can right click on the main volume and hit previous versions and it will list all the archive points on the volume and all the backup points on your external storage device(network share etc.)

Also recovering or viewing a 'previous version' from the volume or a backup is as easily as hitting open and viewing the Folder or Volume as it looked at a particular day or time, being able to browse through the entire volume and even search it as it existed on that date and time.

No Time Machine interface needed, and even your external backups are not needed for the basic functionality as it uses the Volume Shadow features of NTFS every time you modify a file on your computer.

---2) Scripted Backups, with folder syncing, etc. Tools like Copy and XCopy have been replaced in Windows and you have RoboCopy as well as new PowerShell copy features.

RoboCopy is probably what you are looking for, as it is a complete backup and archiving tool, in addition to performing basic file copying. It does folder syncing, mirroring, etc, etc and can create a perfect copy of even the system volume with all attributes, NTFS meta data, and ACLs kept in tact that you can simply use RoboCopy again from the boot DVD in the WinPE environment to restore a volume exactly.

(WinPE is essentially NT with a generic GUI, so unlike XP, it allows NT and even Win32/64 commandline and some GUI utilities to run on what is essentially the 'MinWin' layers of NT. WinPE is also what Vista and Win7 use for setup/upgrades.)

---3) Other utilities.---

If the built in Complete Backup/User Data Backup tools or the RoboCopy utility don't provide the features you want, there are additional 'IT' scale tools in the resource kit that add even more functionality, as well as the PowerShell features.

You can even click 'install SUA' and use or compile any *nix utility you like and use it. NT doesn't care if you are using the BSD subsystem or Win32.

There are also the Win32 ports of the *nix utilities that a lot of *nix users love.

----

One PS about Powershell...

PowerShell is more of a CLI for the NT architecture.

Which means it is the first CLI designed around the object based kernel architecture of NT, and unlike a *nix CLI, doesn't deal with just device I/O and text, but uses the 'object' constructs that NT is uses instead.

So Powershell can request and interact with devices and I/O on an object level as well as pass and work with objects from the NT and Win32 Subsystem that would be basic devices and textual on *nix.

i.e. It can work directly with an object and its properties at the CLI level from the NT kernel and not just textual parameters and understands NT objects in the kernel from things like the token based security of NT to even the Win32 subsystem WMI objects that create the GUI, other interfaces all the way through process and services that work with NT in object form. (This is one area NT was designed to be more advanced than UNIX, as the basic device and textual nature of the UNIX model was considered to be outdated when NT was created, and using a real 'object' model that exposed information, functions, and properties for I/O was seen as the more robust system.

In business environments nobody actually bothers with backuping up the notebooks/workstations. You just save your files on a network drive (you can have My Documents redirected to a network share if you want, and even have it cached locally in the case of a laptop). You could also use something like iFolder to sync your files to a server. The servers are either backed up with scripts (for *nix based stuff) or something like Backup Exec (for Windows based servers).
If you want something more similar to r

Robocopy [wikipedia.org] is a free command-line tool similar to rsync that comes with Vista and is a free download for previous versions of Windows. The syntax is a little clumsy, but it works pretty well for simple backups (that is, directory replication). A free 3rd party tool that's pretty good is Cobian Backup [cobiansoft.com]. However there are probably hundreds of different "backup" utilities for Windows so you might want to just try a couple and see how they work for you.

PowerShell is pretty nice, certainly it's leaps and bounds better than CMD or WSH. Object-oriented and allows full access to the.NET framework which is pretty nice. Easily extensible as well by writing your own "cmdlets" (a.NET program invoked like a built-in command).

Because obviously rsync is the *only* way to *ever* backup *any* software *ever!*

I use Mozy to back up: http://mozy.com/ [mozy.com] It's just quicker and easier than everything else out there. But there are a billion non-rsync backup options for Windows. And of course there's a Windows port of rsync, so there you go.

PowerShell isn't much like Bash, it's really only "like" itself... it's basically an Object Oriented CLI system which access to most/all of the.net library functions. I haven't worked with it much, but it

Step 1: Put your files where you can find them. Your home directory (c:\users\username) is a good place.

After that it's simple. Robocopy is a nifty, rscync-ish command-line tool; you can get it on Server 2003 or XP as a separate download. You can also get SyncToy, a GUI program. Windows 7's (and Vista's) built-in backup program can do some nifty things (including create a complete PC image), but only in the Business and Ultimate editions. (Natch.)

Most don't (but that's not a surprise, is it - people in general are lazy...).

Otherwise, most probably use the built-in "Windows Backup" utility, which is pretty basic, though. For more advanced stuff, there's something like Acronis True Image (not free, though). Or you can just use any of the numerous rsync Win32 ports (e.g. Cygwin, which is probably the most stable option, but Google should give you some more).

Also, what's the new "Power Shell" like? Is it like bash?

It's not like bash at all in its concepts, but in terms of power I'd say it's superior. It also

I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! -- the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on Vista release day -- the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets -- in the shade.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

That is so funny. The Windows 7 release blitz has been completely planned.

.
Look at it this way. Vista has been a disaster for Microsoft. Windows 7 is the hopeful salvation. If Microsoft cannot make Windows 7 work and grab marketshare to the level of Windows XP, Microsoft is in deep doo.

So what is a monopolistic comapny to do? Well, one thing is to try to build what the marketeers call a buzz [buzzmarketing.com]. Will Microsoft succeed? Or have the computing masses tasted the freedom of OS-X and Linux?

Let's hope they fix the bug in the Program Compatibility Assistance that installers that don't affect certain registry keys in add/remove to have an error. It basically kills off lots of updaters, plugin installers and PortableApps.com Installers:http://portableapps.com/node/18540 [portableapps.com]

Wow, Microsoft is really trying to run away from Vista as quickly as possible. Could they rush this this to market any more quickly? How long has Vista been out, and has there been a major new version of Windows ever released in such a short time frame?

I think in their desperate rush, they are likely to make the same mistakes again. Will MS ever take the effort to rebuild the system properly?

Wow, Microsoft is really trying to run away from Vista as quickly as possible. Could they rush this this to market any more quickly? How long has Vista been ou

Vista has been released in January, 2007. Given that May release date is for RC, and assuming that final build of 7 comes sometime this summer, this makes it 2.5 years.

and has there been a major new version of Windows ever released in such a short time frame?

Yes, absolutely. For example, NT 4 was released slightly over a year after NT 3.51, and was a very major update. WinXP took slightly less than 2 years from Win2K. In fact, so far, over 5 years it took for Vista is the longest it ever was, and ~2.5 years would be quite average.

I think in their desperate rush, they are likely to make the same mistakes again. Will MS ever take the effort to rebuild the system properly?

Actually, an argument could be made that *Vista* was the OS that they rushed, and released too early. Remember how about a year before it was released, they rewrote HUGE chunks of it because it sucked?

Windows 7 is basically "Vista done right" (at least, as right as MS can ever make anything). You should try it. Even the beta version of Windows 7 is pretty nice.

Never mind that Vista is actually pretty good now. Post-SP1 Vista is good. Better than XP in almost every way.

This is sort of off-topic, but I'm wondering if someone can explain the finer points of Technet for me.

The Microsoft website is reasonably specific about what's offered by a Technet subscription and describes the allowed use of the "Evaluation Copies" provided by that subscription, but after sifting through the marketing-speak, I'm still left wondering what, if anything, isn't being said.

For anyone wanting to maintain a home lab of MS software, for example, is it a worthwhile purchase? Or are the evaluatio

Right. It's not like Microsoft would ever do anything like change the way certain files are handled by the OS or hardware based upon whether the contents of those files could possibly have been copyrighted.

While I would agree that overwriting GRUB/LiLo/Your Bootloader Here is annoying, the average user is orders of magnitude more likely to have an issue with a corrupted, windows-written bootloader than a conflict with an intentionally installed one.

Well, I'm not the average user, and if Microsoft can't accept it, I won't pay them.

Even at that, Windows would have to be added to the list. To my knowledge, that would have to be done manually by the user.

"[ ] Don't install bootloader (WARNING: say yes only if you know why!)" There. Was it so difficult? And those who know why, know how.

Except unless it was there you wouldn't be able to play any media that required it, and unless it's needed it will never affect you if you play media that doesn't require it, so it's not really a big issue anyway.

Protected Media Path is NOT DRM. And it was included in Windows XP under a different name.

It is a platform service which enables application developers to meet the requirements imposed by certain content protection standards. It is in of itself completely unaware of any DRM schemes or media types.

It is also completely inactive and irrelevant until somebody's code calls the necessary APIs. Enabling PMP features doesn't impact performance, and the PMP code is ONLY run while an application is actively makin

Well if you simply read chunks from one file and write them to the destination you end up with all sorts of interesting effects happening.

e.g.: Flooding memory with queued writes and making the OS page as a result.Or queued writes causing your copy operation to be "complete" on the UI before the writing actually finishes. (XP suffers from this quite badly, a copy can be going for a good 5-10 seconds after the window closes)Or the opposite, when copying lots of small files, insisting on fully closing the previous file before opening the next to avoid the previous bug, causing an additional ~5ms read seek (depending on media) between each copy. (Pre-SP1 Vista's problem IIUC*).

Heh, how do you define success? I think it's different to how I do it.

Further, pretty much everyone that I've spoken to that has tried Win7 (even Vista-haters) have said it is far and away better than at least Vista and have certainly given me the impression that it's going to be a worthy successor to XP.

HAHAHAHAHA Ya gotta love it, personally I hoped for a "flamebait" rather than a "troll" from the astroturfers but either way I draw mod points. Keep 'em coming guys. That's assuming the sense of humor blue screened you ya.